Classics : Essie Blanc

White nails are timeless, chic and classic. I'm obsessed with them this Spring and I was last year too. Surprisingly, this is no new trend, since Essie's opaque white polish Blanc has been around since the beginning of the Essie nail polish line 35 years ago. Blanc was among the first 12 polishes Essie created and here it is still going strong.

Blanc is a staple polish in any Essie fanatic's collection...but does it really have the best formula? I've been back and forth on how I feel about this polish. Last Summer I borrowed my friend Austrian's bottle of Blanc so I could compare it next to Private Weekend. When she handed it to me she was like "good luck!" and honestly she was right. The application was so terrible. It was thick and goopy and gave me a bumpy and uneven finish. I couldn't imagine why everyone loved this polish so much or why it had stuck around in the Essie permanent collection for over 30 years if it was so bad. I figured Austrian just had a bad bottle, so a few months ago I picked up a brand new one and tried it out for my Essie Whites Comparison. It was incredible! Smooth, easy to apply, self-levelled amazingly and almost opaque in one coat. This was definitely not the same formula of polish that Austrian had, so my opinion did a complete 180.

I've now owned my new bottle of Blanc for a few months. Polishing with it this time, after opening and using this bottle a handful of times, it is not the perfect polish that it was when I did the Whites Comparison. I can definitely see how Austrian's bottle got goopy and thick and terrible to work with, because for me it was already showing signs of slight thickening, a little bit of polish strings off the end of the nail and not completely self-levelling with a bit of ridging. It was much more difficult to use this time rather than the easy breezy first-time use. I did use a different base coat, so I think Fill The Gap would help, but this was more about the thickening and ridging of the polish, that base coat wouldn't help. In the end, I used two coats of Blanc and a coat of Essie Good to Go to smooth out my nails. It left me with a pretty result, but I can just imagine that application is going to get worse over time and that really disappoints me.

Blanc why do you have to be so beautiful and so frustrating? I love the way it looks and I love the way it applies as a fresh bottle, but my love for it is waning. I'm thinking my $3 bottle of Sally Hansen White On is better. Of course I'd have to do a side-by-side comparison to see if that is true.

Have you had issues with Essie Blanc? I'd love to know your experiences.

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comments:

Love your blog.! Love the way you take time and effort to show the pros and cons every Essie...I too am a big fan of Essie and love to read all about Essie polishes at one place:) Glad I found your blog...:)-Sindhu